


Do Not Compel Me So

by Mithrigil



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Downright Unethical Use of the Force, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Mind Control, subconscious gaslighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9374834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: Anakin has always had an easy time getting what he wants.(He never means to do it.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for Anakin subconsciously mindtricking everyone around him came from a long discussion I had with BSD+Q. I had honestly never considered it before. I'm not sure I completely ascribe to the theory, but in exploring it like this I think it's got some credence...

Against his better judgment, Qui-Gon gambles for lives instead of just a hyperdrive. He trusts the boy to win, because the boy’s confidence is unassailable, and there is something in the Force that _compels_ him, pulls him, alive and undeniable.

(Perhaps it is no accident that the Chosen One was enslaved by Toydarians and Hutts, who were immune to his unselfconscious charm.)

Shmi has no need to justify sending her son off to a better life: that is love, pure and simple. But only after Anakin is resigned to their parting does he flee. Anakin has to want it first. It's how he's always been.

*

Though his instincts would have decreed otherwise, Maul attacks the seasoned warrior first, not the defenseless youngling. He misses his chance, swinging by on the speeder, though that little golden human head had been ripe for the taking.

*

Anakin passes all his tests before the Council.

They still wait until he is out of the room to pronounce him unfit. Fretful. Dangerous. Qui-Gon’s wishes to train the boy are completely genuine--he has taken in so many strays in his life, this boy is as another--but that danger is undeniable, even to him, and especially to Obi-Wan, whose grasp of signs and portents has always been strong.

Obi-Wan knows that his Master isn’t entirely himself. This is, after all, the man who only took Obi-Wan as a Padawan after weeks of begging and trials. But, Obi-Wan thinks, in that insecure and unstable part of his mind that never quite went away after Bandomeer, that it’s simply because Anakin is better, somehow. Anakin is wanted. Anakin is chosen.

*

Against their better judgment, they keep Jar-Jar around, because Anakin likes him.

*

Despite all the pre-flight preparations of the Nubian Royal Guard, no one scans Anakin’s fighter for life. Or if they do, they don’t remark on it. After all, the more pilots off the ground, the better, right?

*

Qui-Gon’s last wish was to _train the boy_. That doesn’t mean staying with the Order. For hours, Obi-Wan resigns himself to the possibility of leaving the Jedi, taking Anakin with him to learn the ways of the Force as Qui-Gon would have done. The Council has every right to reject his suit, especially now, with Qui-Gon dead at the hands of a suspected Sith.

But one look at Anakin’s eyes in the light of the funeral pyre--one chill of loss and death and unbridled fear--and Obi-Wan resolves, against his better judgment, that they will stay.

(Anakin will be a Jedi. Anakin does not know what else to be.)

*

Training Anakin is a hassle. No, not a hassle, a struggle: it always comes out worth it, in the end.

Besides, with such an unconventional past, how can Obi-Wan expect him to be a conventional Jedi?

(They are almost never apart, these nine trying years. Obi-Wan never thinks about leaving the Order again, unless Anakin brings it up first.)

*

When Padmé first sees him, she thinks of him as a child. She is a worldly stateswoman with galactic concerns and a life that, unlike Obi-Wan’s, does not revolve around Anakin Skywalker.

It still takes only days for her heart to change. Days, in Anakin’s presence, besieged by his love and its power.

(She had been planning to use marriage as a political tool, if she wed at all. Rush Clovis, perhaps, or Mina Bonteri. Jedi are an entanglement, their place in the Republic uncertain. And Padmé otherwise insists she has had her fill of scandal. But she and Anakin solemnize their union at her house on Naboo, witnessed by droids and a cleric sworn to silence, which he will never break.)

*

The Tusken Raiders die like animals, because that’s all Anakin thinks they are.

*

The 501st is the only detachment of the GAR that can keep up with Anakin. They’re as reckless as he is. They follow his plans easily, learn his tells and his style. Any new recruits catch on quickly: _General Skywalker is strange,_ Rex says sometimes, _but every Shiny gets the hang of him eventually._

And yes, of course. They do.

And their loyalty, once they’ve learned how Anakin operates, is irrefutable.

*

Obi-Wan has turned a blind eye to Anakin’s foibles for years. At this point, it’s willful disregard.

(But whose will?)

*

It is how he bests Count Dooku, the preeminent swordsman of the age.

It is how he unmans Mace Windu, who can only stare in shock as he falls.

Truly, the only one immune to Anakin's wishes is the one who made him in the first place. Sidious has had practice.

*

Padmé does not want children. They would be politically inconvenient, especially with her publically unattached, and this war, and Anakin so unstable whenever he comes to Coruscant. She rightly tells him, more than once, that their marriage is barely real, that they can’t go on like this, that the war is hard enough without having to skulk around like criminals. But she always finds herself in his arms again, and something intangible falls into place in her heart.

The Force works in mysterious ways.

It would not appear she has a say in the matter.

(She could, of course, terminate the pregnancy. But something feels wrong about that, somehow. After all, Anakin has always wanted a family.)

*

The truth is, if Anakin knew what he was doing to he people around him, he would despise himself. Anakin, who hates slavery, warping the minds of those he loves? He would _destroy_ himself.

But that wouldn’t be enough, a part of him thinks. Death would be too merciful. For someone who is as evil as he must be (to manipulate, to use, to _hurt_ ), the only fitting punishment is a life of enmity and suffering.

So perhaps it is his subconscious wish that Obi-wan leave him to burn. Perhaps it is his apology for a life of slavery that he gives Obi-Wan the strength to walk away. He is a monster. He deserves to be seen as that monster.

But he can never be sure: does the galaxy only hate him because he wants it to?

Padmé dies free. As far as he knows, the child dies free. Obi-Wan suffers, but at least he too is free.

And Anakin swears himself to another Master, because he cannot trust himself with the power the Force has given him.

*


End file.
